On TV, heart attacks are obvious. They cause crushing chest pain. Actors clutch their chests and collapse with theatrical flair. In reality, heart attacks are often not so easy to spot. “Heart attacks often feel like heartburn,” says William A. Norcross, M.D., a professor of family and preventive medicine at the University of California, San […]

The stereotype is that heart disease—mostly heart attack—is a man’s disease. Actually, it’s the leading cause of death for both men and women. Heart attack, medically known as myocardial infarction or MI, is almost as lethal as all cancers combined. Heart attacks strike Americans once every 29 seconds, and kill once a minute. The American […]

When Dean Ornish entered Baylor College of Medicine in Houston in 1975, it was a leading center of what, at the time, was the hottest new high-tech treatment for heart disease, coronary artery bypass surgery. Surgeons there were winning acclaim for crafting detours around blockages in the arteries that supplied blood to people’s hearts. But […]